In the summer of 1968, the Beatles were in the studio recording “Hey Jude.”

I was a college freshman when “Hey Jude” was released. Fresh out of high school, preparing to become an adult, to enter the world of mortgages, family, career, and countless blood-draws.

Some things are as fresh as your morning breakfast while other events seem so far away it takes a reminder: an aroma, a taste, a chance comment to make you remember they even happened to you. It’s like how you’d feel if you went into a coma during the Nixon administration and woke up yesterday to discover the current president conspires against reporters just as much as Tricky Dick did.

“Hey Jude” was the first Beatles’ single on the Apple label. It ran for more than seven minutes, which gave disc jockeys a chance for more relaxed bathroom visits and more bounce-for-the-ounce for my jukebox quarter as I sat at the Scoreboard Bar and Grill in Chapel Hill, drinking from pilsner glasses and eating greasy hamburgers. Flash forward a mere 45 years and I am listening to that same tune as interpreted by my grandson and members of his dance company in their annual recital.

Talk about volumes of water under the bridge. One minute I’m a single man plotting no certain strategies other than whether or not I should get cheese on the next burger and the next, I’m watching my grandson bust a move to “Gangnam Style” and my granddaughter delicately pirouette to “I Can See Clearly Now.” And I thought writing term papers on symbolism were an exercise in futility.

It struck me during the recital that much of the music these kids danced to was written way before they were born and that one number, Randy Newman’s “In Germany Before the War,” is a tune that was inspired by the carryings-on of a German serial child killer known as the Monster of Dusseldorf. I am hoping that it showed up in a jazz interpretation from educational ignorance. Otherwise, it was as poorly planned as the manhole locations in the go-lane of new southbound Mebane Street.

As for the recital music, these dancers, who range in age from five to 18, have no idea how long “Puttin’ on the Ritz” or “Son of a Preacher Man” have been around. Who else was represented? Elvis clocked in with “All Shook Up” and “Hound Dog.” The Four Tops checked in with “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch.” Huey Lewis tunes were there, as were songs by Stevie Nicks, Kool and the Gang and even “Weird Al” Yankovic.

A good memory is an old friend that calls on you when you didn’t even know you needed a visit. So it was that the music of my youth revisited me through this children’s recital. For a few hours, I had the advantage of being an adult and a young person at the same time.

Page 2 of 2 - The little girls and big girls and handful of boys were a showcase of color, sparkles, glitter. They wore bright, primary colors and rhinestones, Daisy Mae polka dots and soft sheer fabrics and crinolines. And the energy was only matched by the frightened uncertainty of those who were experiencing their first performance on a stage with an auditorium full of people watching them. There were the accomplished and the awkward, the newbies and the old hands. They were all sizes and shapes, from the skinny to the not-so-skinny, pre-school to high school senior, their hair pulled back so tight into buns their eyes were slanted or so flowing they looked like princesses in search of a fairy tale.

It’s a good thing I was sitting down or I would have been plumb worn trying to keep the beat. These children had that boundless energy they were born with. There was no indication it’s going to diminish any time soon. But diminish it will. We all wind down eventually. Some of us just wind down quicker than others.

My toes snapped with the cloggers and tappers, my heart moved along with the ballet numbers and as for the interpretative dance, never has creative wallowing around on the stage been so captivating, tasteful and sophisticated. My eyes constantly darted, trying to keep up with the performers as they moved like frantic fleas on a running dog. Some moved effortlessly and others moved painfully through their paces, keeping their eyes on the backstage director who must have moved like a bent flywheel. Some were spot-on with their routines while others looked as though they had stepped out of one of those nightmares in which someone grabs you just before the curtain rises and tells you that the white swan has not shown up and you need to dance Swan Lake without rehearsals. Or that you have been tapped to play Hamlet and have five minutes to learn his soliloquies. That bone-chilling fear must surely rise up in all of us at some point or other. It either makes us tough or sends us to Dix Hill for a complete mental oil-change and psychological tune-up.

Even as the best ice cream cone in the world eventually melts, so the most captivating of recitals must come to an end. I have some wonderful memories, but sitting long hours is not good for the bony butts of grandfathers.

I’m just glad no one danced to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” I might still be rooted to that seat.

Jay Ashley is managing editor of the Times-News. He steps lively at jashley@thetimesnews.com